<nettime> WP: Not Funny

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<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47190-2001Sep17.html>

   Essay
   Not Funny: The Rules of Humor Changed on Sept. 11
   By Gene Weingarten
   Washington Post Staff Writer
   Tuesday, September 18, 2001; Page C01
   
   The time, for all those keeping score, was 5 days 2 hours 8 minutes
   and 1 second. That was the hiatus between the arrival of the first
   plane at the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and the arrival of
   the first known attempt at Internet humor on the subject.
   
   I stress "attempt." It was feeble, and mercifully off-point: Just a
   list of anagrams of the name Osama bin Laden. ("Is a banal demon." "I
   am a bland nose." "No! A mad lesbian." "Animals on a bed.") For the
   anonymous individual who scattershotted this item across a bleeding
   America, it seemed almost a hiccup, some impulse that simply had to
   come out. He or she -- I'm guessing he -- wasuncomfortable enough
   about it to have appended a verse that he may or may not have known
   was by Melville, written in grief and anger after Lincoln's
   assassination:
   
   There is sobbing of the strong
   And a pall upon the land
   But the people in their weeping
   Bare the iron hand.
   Beware the people weeping
   When they bare the iron hand.
   
   So, no, the e-mail doesn't really qualify as humor.
   
   And even it was five days in the making. For gallows humor, five days
   is an eternity; hours after the Challenger explosion, phones were
   crackling with bad jokes.
   
   No, we don't need sick humor, not now or ever. The problem is, we are
   finding no humor, anywhere.
   
   When will we be able to laugh again?
   
   Not now, says the New Yorker. This week's edition will arrive denuded
   of cartoons, for the first time since Hiroshima. Not yet, says the
   Onion, the wickedly irreverent weekly newspaper parody, which has
   canceled its next edition; punch up the Web site and you see stuff
   from what seems like an impossibly quainter time:"Expanding Universe
   Could Allow for More Than 750 Quadrillion Blockbuster
   Locations";"Sci-Fi Fans Argue the Better of Two As-Yet-Unreleased
   Films."
   
   Leno has not yet been back on the air. "The Daily Show" has gone to
   reruns for the week. Craig Kilborn decided to return last night;
   Letterman, too, and if you wondered whether he was going to try to be
   funny, you need look no further than the promos. Featured guest: Dan
   Rather.
   
   No one's aiming for humor. No one's in the mood, and who can blame
   them?
   
   I can, maybe. We need it.
   
   The day after the bombing, the editors of SheckyMagazine.com, a Web
   site for stand-up comics, advised its readers to go out there and
   entertain: "Some comics have expressed an understandable reticence to
   'tell our little jokes' at such a heavy time. We would advise these
   comics to regain perspective. 'Our little jokes' have the power to
   enable people to escape the horror."
   
   Most comedy clubs, however, have stayed shuttered.
   
   It's too bad. When people are filled with grief, they need to cry.
   When they are filled with fear, they need to laugh.
   
   No one ever explained this better than humorist Dave Barry, and never
   was his explanation more apt than it is today: "A sense of humor is a
   measurement of the extent to which we realize we are trapped in a
   world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we express the
   anxiety we feel at this."
   
   We'll laugh again, because it is our nature. You can't stop it,
   really. I see some people laughing together, in little seditious
   knots. They are laughing on the street, and where I work. Not at the
   horrors, of course: They're laughing at small ironies, stupid dogs,
   human sillinesses, the same things they've always laughed at.
   Sanctioned, public laughter will surely follow.
   
   But it won't be the same. Like so much else in America, the rules
   changed last Tuesday.
   
   I am looking at the current edition of American Enterprise magazine.
   On page 11 is a cartoon of a man and women in their Manhattan
   apartment, watching a politician on TV. The man says: "Everything with
   this guy is 'America this' and 'America that.' What about those of us
   who live in New York City?" The issue is dated Oct./Nov. in that
   bizarre and occasionally embarrassing convention in which magazines
   postdate their issues to increase shelf life. But you know it was put
   together before Sept. 11.
   
   Not funny, now.
   
   Last week The Post decided to publish as scheduled its Sunday humor
   contest, the Style Invitational, which I edit. This feature is not
   famous for its political sensitivity, but this weekend I found myself
   culling from the results any entries that suggested any cognitive
   weaknesses in the president of the United States.
   
   Not funny, now.
   
   I just received a second bit of Internet e-mail, a second attempt at
   disaster humor. It purported to be an illustration of a design for a
   new World Trade Center. This new design is not two towers, but five.
   They looked like fingers, the middle one stuck up much higher than the
   rest.
   
   Still not funny. But getting closer, maybe. A good sign.
   
                     © 2001 The Washington Post Company

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